Review: Laurie Anderson, Trisha Brown, and Gordon Matta-Clark: Pioneers of the Downtown Scene New York 1970s

Abstract

Laurie Anderson, Trisha Brown, and Gordon Matta-Clark: Pioneers of the Downtown Scene New York 1970s. Barbican Art Gallery, London, 3 March–22 May 2011. It is a rare exhibition in which form and content mirror one other, and in which the institutional frame serves to further reinforce the relationship between the two. Laurie Anderson, Trisha Brown, and Gordon Matta-Clark: Pioneers of the Downtown Scene New York 1970s , is an anomalous jewel. The exhibition, curated by Lydia Yee, comprises over 160 rarely seen works from Anderson, Brown, and Matta-Clark, staged with a truly multidisciplinary approach. Sculptures, drawings, photographs, films, and mixed media stand alongside posters, documentation, and other ephemera. Throughout its run these were supplemented by a series of daily performances in the gallery, as well as talks, films, and events. The exhibition was divided into four parts—Downtown New York, Drawing and Performing, Urban Interventions, and Performance and Interaction—in order to move fluidly between disciplinary boundaries. This idea was not only central to the exhibition, but to the Barbican itself, whose mission questions established art historical taxonomies. The show's context was the powerful experimental art scene that flourished in New York in the 1970s, when the city was on the verge of bankruptcy, crime and unemployment were rampant, and SoHo was facing the disappearance of manufacturing industries. Anderson, Brown, and Matta-Clark took to the urban landscape as the site for their work. Decoupling sculpture, dance, music, and drawing from the gallery and stage, they provided a counter movement to the …